Teen opens fire in school, then kills self

CLEVELAND - A 14-year-old suspended student opened fire in his downtown high school yesterday, wounding four people, as terrified schoolmates hid in closets and bathrooms and huddled under laboratory desks. He then killed himself.

A fellow student at SuccessTech Academy alternative school said that Asa H. Coon, who was suspended for fighting two days earlier, had made threats in front of students and teachers last week.

"He's crazy," Doneisha LeVert said. "He threatened to blow up our school. He threatened to stab everybody. We didn't think nothing of it."

Coon was wearing all black and was armed with two .38 caliber revolvers. Later, police found a duffel bag stocked with ammunition and three knives in a bathroom, officials said. Parents were angry that firearms got into a school equipped with metal detectors that students said were intermittently used.

In calls to 911, students described Coon as 5 foot 5, white and "kind of chubby."

The police would not elaborate on the fight that led to Coon's suspension this week. Court documents showed that he spent time in juvenile detention centers.

Officials said two teachers and two students were shot, and that a 14-year-old girl fell and hurt her knee while running out of the school.

The victims included Michael Peek, 15, who was treated for a gunshot wound to the torso and was in stable condition last night. Darnell Rodgers, 18, was shot in the elbow. He was treated and released from a hospital. David Kachadourian, 57, a math teacher, was shot in the back, and Michael Grassie, 42, a multicultural-studies teacher, was shot in the chest. Kachadourian was in good condition and expected to be released. Grassie remained in stable condition after surgery.

Trinnetta McGrady, a 10th-grader who was trampled by students fleeing the gunman, suffered knee and back injuries and was expected to be released as well, police said.

Witnesses said the shooter moved through the converted five-story downtown office building, working his way up through the first two floors of administrative offices to the third floor of classrooms. Officials said he was wearing a black Marilyn Manson concert shirt, black jeans and had black-painted fingernails.

The first person to be shot, Peek, had punched Coon in the face right before the shootings began, said fellow student Rasheem Smith, 15.

Coon "came out of the bathroom and bumped Mike and he [Mike] punched him in his face. Mike started walking. He shot Mike in the side." Peek, 14, didn't know that Coon had a gun, Smith said.

Coon had been suspended since Monday for fighting near the school that day, said Charles Blackwell, president of SuccessTech's student-parent organization. He did not know how Coon got into the building.

Blackwell said that a security guard was on the first floor, but that the position of another guard on the third floor had been eliminated.

Student Frances Henderson, 14, said she often got into arguments with Coon, who once told her, "I got something for you all." He was a "Gothic" who usually wore a trench coat, black boots and a dog collar, she said.

Henderson, who is black, said she didn't believe race played a role in the shootings.

Students stood outside the building, many in tears, hugging one another and on cell phones. Others shouted at reporters with TV cameras to leave them alone. Family members also stood outside, waiting for their children to be released.

Classes at all schools in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District were canceled for today.

SuccessTech Academy is an alternative high school in the public school district that stresses technology and entrepreneurship. It is housed on several floors of the district's downtown Cleveland Lakeside Avenue administration building.

The school has about 240 mainly black students with a small number of white and Hispanic students. *